A New Non-Contact Measurement of Heartbeat Variations for Car Drivers Using Doppler Sensors

Kuniaki Yano1, Gen Kondo1, Yukihiro Kamiya1

  • 1Aichi Prefectural University

Details

13:48 - 14:06 | Wed 28 Jun | | WeCPl.2

Session: Driver Assistance and Warning Systems

Abstract

Car drivers' sudden illness cause serious traffic accident. In Japan, it is reported by a medical doctor that the most of the illness causing serious traffic accident is induced by heart abnormalities. This situation is concerned along with coming aging society. Non-contact monitoring using a Doppler sensor is one of the attractive solutions for this matter since there is no need to put sensors on the body of drivers. Doppler sensor module radiates an electro-magnetic wave and receives reflected waves yielded by human bodies so that it outputs the frequency deviation between the transmitted- and the received waves. We can detect the heartbeats through signal processing of the output of the Doppler sensor module, because this frequency deviation is caused by the movement of the body surface relevant to heartbeats. In this paper, we newly propose a very simple signal processing scheme to detect heartbeat variations of car drivers. The proposed method is capable of detecting even slight variations, so it surely detects the large variation of heartbeats observed at the sudden illness caused by heart abnormalities. In addition to the performance of the detection, it is also emphasized that the proposed scheme can monitor multiple persons at the same time.